This invention relates to an absorbent pad and more particularly to a disposable absorbent pad providing a good fit to a pad wearer's body.
Various absorbent pads of such a type have conventionally been well known, for example, a disposable absorbent pad provided on the side facing the wearer's garment with a depressed region extending in a longitudinal direction of the pad (REFERENCE 1); a disposable absorbent pad provided in a vicinity of transversely opposite side edges with a pair of regions depressed from the upper surface toward the lower surface of the pad (REFERENCE 2); or a disposable absorbent pad provided on both the side facing the wearer's body and the side facing away from the wearer's body with a plurality of grooves (REFERENCE 3). Such known disposable absorbent pads unexceptionally intend to achieve a smooth bending of the pad.    [REFERENCE 1] Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-210507    [REFERENCE 2] Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2000-166967    [REFERENCE 3] Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 1998-99372
In the case of the absorbent pad disclosed in REFERENCE 1, the pad is easily bent along the depressed region so that the side of the pad facing the wearer's body may define an apex along this depressed region. However, it is unreliable that the pad could be kept in close contact with the pad wearer's body so far as the region of the pad other than the depressed region is concerned. In other words, there is an anxiety that so-called sideways leakage of bodily fluid might occur in the region of the pad being not in close contact with the wearer's body. For the absorbent pad disclosed in REFERENCE 2, it is certainly easy to be bent along the paired depressions and thereby to be deformed over the full width of the pad in an inverted U-shape. However, there is a possibility that the pad might be bent in the opposite direction to create a U-shape under a body weight of the wearer. In the case of the absorbent pad disclosed in REFERENCE 3, while the grooves form a plurality of crests adapted to come in close contact with the wearer's body as the pad is bent along the grooves, a plurality of troughs each defined between each pair of the adjacent crests cannot come in close contact with the wearer's body.